I apologize for never closing the loop on this. I did solve the problem, ultimately, and I'll get to that later in this note. First, though, I feel a need to vent, because Adobe tech support was much, much worse than useless on this. Adobe tech support (in India, I think) did spend a long time, and also wasted a lot of my time. They asked for, and I granted, full access to my computer, allowing an Adobe tech to rummage around on my hard drive, trying this and that, for >2 hours. A lot of what he did (I could watch it on my screen) seemed useless, and ultimately all of it was useless. He eventually told me that the problem was with my user account, and I could solve the problem by creating a new user account and running LR from there! This seemed nuts to me because there's no way that the problem could be with the account itself, it could only be with some file in the account. So I could either create a new account, install LR in it from scratch, and never run anything else, still running the risk that whatever was causing the problem would happen again anyway, and cope forever with issues of moving back and forth between my multiple user accounts. Or, I could create the new account, move all my existing files over to it (with all the complications of ownership and permission changes everywhere) and probably move whatever offending file was the problem to the new account so it wouldn't work anyway. Basically, Adobe was declaring defeat, saying they couldn't fix their software on my machine, so just start from scratch, create lots of work and hassle for myself, and maybe not solve the problem anyway. I asked to speak with the tech's manager, who was unsympathetic, but suggested that I try deleting Lightroom, running the Creative Cloud Cleaner app, reinstall, and see if that fixed it. In addition, they would do some additional research and get back to me with any other ideas. They also told me to call Apple tech support (actually, they said call Mac tech support) and see if they could help. This seemed kind of silly, since nothing else was problematic on my machine, only LR. Again, just Adobe declaring defeat. So, I did that. I first deleted and reinstalled LR. No improvement. Then, I deleted all of CC - the CC app, Photoshop, Camera Raw, etc., ran the cleaner, reinstalled. Again, no luck. I then uninstalled CC, cleaned, then deleted LOTS of files and directories - everything that I could find referenced on the web in various forums, or on Adobe's support site, or that I saw for myself - libraries, directories, stuff in the system Library and my own Library directory, you name it. I reinstalled, to no avail. The identical problem persisted. During all this, I was updating my Adobe trouble ticket. Over the course of a few days, I probably updated it 3-5 times, with no response from Adobe. Then, I waited a little longer. About 10 days after first calling them, with no e-mail or written response, I called again. The tech that I reached said that they considered my problem closed! I guess they thought all of my posting to my trouble ticket was for my own fun, and their promise to do "additional research" was just their way of telling me to get lost and leave them alone. At this point, I did call Apple tech support. My mac is not in warranty, and Apple had no obligation to help me for free, but in fact they did help. The front line tech, after trying a few things, referred me to a senior tech, who walked me through a few more things, then ran a crash reporting utility so I could send him the dumps. A couple of days later, Apple got back to me with a suggestion that fixed the problem. The difference between Adobe tech support and Apple's couldn't have been more striking. Where Apple was professional and enthusistically helpful, Adobe was amateurish and uncaring. Ultimately, Apple solved the problem that Adobe couldn't, even though it turned out to be an Adobe problem. Yet, I pay Adobe every month for a subscription, and Apple basically did it for free. THANK YOU, APPLE! All of this cost me >2 weeks and untold hours of my time, in the middle of a project that I couldn't complete. I have no words to express my frustration. OK, venting concluded, on to the solution to my problem. Apple sent me e-mail with the following info: Below is one of the call outs to a specific user Adobe Preference data show causes of concern around the crashing: terminating with uncaught exception of type dvacore::filesupport::eof_error: $$$/dvacore/filesupport/Error/EOFFmtStringWithFile=Error reading past end of file: '/Users/jerry/Library/Preferences/Adobe/Lightroom/7.2/Debug Database.txt' abort() called So, the file /Users/jerry/Library/Preferences/Adobe/Lightroom/7.2/Debug Database.txt was corrupt and/or there is a bug in LR where it gets screwed up reading or writing that file sometimes. In any event, I deleted the file. When I reran LR, it recreated the file, and all was good. Problem solved. Of course, if you have this problem, translate "jerry" to your user name, and "7.2" to whatever version you're running.
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